What Doesn’t Work to Reduce Reoffending?

Abstract

Abstract. This paper describes a review of meta-analyses and systematic reviews, to explore what appears to be ineffective in reducing reoffending among people convicted of crime. The focus of this review is on secondary or tertiary crime prevention initiatives, concentrating on interventions aiming to reduce offending among adults serving sentences in custody or the community. Twenty-one reviews met the inclusion criteria, covering interventions aiming to reduce violence, domestic violence, sexual offending, drug misuse, driving under the influence, and general reoffending. Fourteen of these reviews identified interventions that have no impact on criminal recidivism, and three identified interventions that in at least one study were actively harmful by increasing the risk of recidivism of participants. Findings suggest that ineffective interventions may comprise drug testing as a stand-alone strategy, insight-oriented and behavioral interventions for sexual offending, brief interventions for alcohol misuse, and in prison in the longer-term, agonist pharmacological treatment alone for drug misuse. Those interventions that had demonstrated, in at least one of the evaluations reviewed, that they were associated with negative behaviors were court-mandated treatment for domestic violence, boot camps, incarceration-based agonist drug treatment and custodial (when compared to noncustodial) sanctions. Taken together with the findings of previous reviews in this area, the authors identify features of interventions which are likely to be ineffective in reducing reoffending. Explanations for these interventions’ likely failure to reduce reoffending draw on criminological and social psychological research and behavioral science. The authors also note that this review may not include all relevant evidence and findings should therefore be considered indicative.

Monitoring prisoners preparing for release: Who ‘fails’ in open prison conditions?

“…Over 90% of those returned to closed conditions for security reasons did not re-offend in 1 year of release. Given the best interventions reduce recidivism by 40% (Lipsey and Wilson, 1998) and meta-analyses indicate that discipline-based approaches delivered without rehabilitative support are unlikely to reduce re-offending (Barnett and Howard, 2018), we argue that prisoners are too readily being recalled. The research indicates that factors such as positive punishment (Schaefer, 2016), procedural injustice (Beijersbergen et al, 2016), stigma, and lack of hope (LeBel et al, 2008) all increase re-offending.…”

Evaluation of the Implementation of a Risk-Need-Responsivity Service in Community Supervision in Sweden

“…However, for probation to comprise a credible, and not merely a less expensive, alternative to incarceration, probation practice needs to deliver effective rehabilitation in the interest of public safety. At the same time, the international research literature provides little support for the effectiveness of the supervision component of probation (e.g., Barnett & Howard, 2018), which has called for a need to narrow the gap between research and practice. The Risk-Need-Responsivity model (RNR; Andrews et al, 1990;Bonta & Andrews, 2017) is currently the most prominent theoretical framework used to inform rehabilitation of criminal justice-involved individuals and, in Sweden, efforts to implement practices based on and strengthen adherence to RNR have been undertaken since the early 2000s.…”

Heraclitus’ River and Recent Advances in Criminal Psychology

“…We wanted to showcase research which we saw as having a direct implication for criminal justice practice. To begin, in their review of recent meta-analyses and systematic reviews, Barnett and Fitzalan Howard (2018) have used systematic review to compile robust evidence for both ineffective and detrimental (i.e., harmful) secondary and tertiary crime prevention approaches. Their review spans methodologically rigorous studies involving relevant control groups across a range of offense categories.…”